


What's in a Name?

by SylphofScript



Series: Everyday I'm Drabblin' [5]
Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Drabble, F/M, Post-Deathly Hallows, Post-Hogwarts
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-07-02
Updated: 2017-07-02
Packaged: 2018-11-21 14:18:16
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,788
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11359215
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SylphofScript/pseuds/SylphofScript
Summary: Unoriginal prompt, ahoy!Draco and Hermione get trapped in a broom closet at work. Conversations ensue.





	What's in a Name?

This, Hermione’s brain supplied while the rest of herself was busy trying to detangle from the man whom she had been thrown against, was not what she had planned for when she had gotten ready for work this morning.

“Bloody—” she cursed, pushing away from a very disgruntled Draco Malfoy. Flipping his now-disheveled hair back, he stood up quickly, brushing his coat off and then holding out a hand for her to take. She did.

“Language finally rubbing off on you?” Draco asked her as he pulled her up, half-amused. He looked to the now solid wall they had just fallen through together, eyebrows drawn. “What in hell _was_ that?”

“New cleaning spell the department is working on,” Hermione replied, now dusting her own jacket off.

“I don’t believe it’s doing a very good job if it’s thought us brooms,” said Draco, looking about the tiny cupboard-like room they were in. Many models of brooms, of all shapes and sizes, filled the space behind and around them.

“Yes, that is the point,” said Hermione, a little haughtily. “They’re working on _removing_ it. It’s escaped from the department and they’ve had trouble recapturing it in order to begin the process.”

“Well,” Draco said, in either acceptance or to change the subject, Hermione wasn’t completely sure, because he seemed to be doing both as he continued with, “how do we go about getting out of here?”

Hermione looked to the wall—the _charmed_ wall that only allowed those who knew the password out, to prevent a stray broom from leaving without its owner’s consent—and frowned. “We have to wait for someone to either drop their broom off, or come to retrieve one.”

Draco stared at her. She flushed, “Don’t give me that look.”

“You don’t know the password?”

“I don’t own a broom!”

Draco’s eyebrows shot up in surprise. “You don’t? Why?”

“I’m not partial to flying,” Hermione said, willing herself not to be embarrassed by this fact. Lots of witches and wizards, and Muggles in addition, didn’t like flying. And she was one of them. “So I have no need for a broom.”

Draco’s expression melted into one of dubiousness, but he didn’t argue the matter further. Just to be safe, Hermione withdrew her wand and began tapping it against the wall, trying different unlocking spells and disenchantments. None of them worked. She refrained from bringing out the bigger spells, however, just in case rebound happened. She didn’t want to have to explain that level of damage to all the broom-holders in the department, _Reparo_ notwithstanding.

“Did you perform all of those silently?” asked Draco once she had replaced her wand with a sigh.

“Yes,” she said, distracted. Wondering how long it would take for someone to come and let them out. Wishing she hadn’t answered that note from Bill so quickly from her office, so he’d think to go looking for her.

“Still clever as ever.” Draco skimmed his fingers along the tail of a particularly shiny model of broom Hermione couldn’t identify. It seemed to quiver beneath his touch, like it had forgotten—as if it were actually sentient, Hermione, _please_ —he had brashly fallen against it just a moment before. “I don’t suppose you’d allow me to simply throw a leg over one of these and batter my way out, a la Carthaginian?”

 _Ah_ , thought Hermione, giving Draco an appreciative glance that he was too busy admiring the broomstick to witness, _he’d been doing his research_. Interesting.

“That would be a negative, Malfoy. These are insured. My job,” Hermione flicked a curl out of her face, “is not.”

Draco tilted his head. “Was that ensured, with an e, or insured, with an i?”

“Both.”

“I see.” Draco dropped his hand with a sign, and the broom settled itself back into its holding. “Why do you still call me Malfoy?”

“Pardon?”

“You still call me Malfoy,” said Draco. “Even in private, like now, you resort to my surname rather than my given, despite the years we’ve known one another.”

“I wouldn’t really call being stuck in a magical broom cupboard together ‘in private.’”

“We’re alone, aren’t we? I believe that constitutes as ‘close enough’, yet you are still calling me Malfoy instead of Draco. I believed us on much better terms than we once had been, what with how Potter keeps trying to invite me ‘round for—What was it? Poke-it?”

“Poker. It’s a card game.”

“Ah,” hummed Draco, curling his non-existent beard with a finger as if in thought. “I’m more of an Exploding Snap kind of man.”

“No, you’re not.”

“No,” he agreed, flashing a grin, “I’m not. See, you know me so well.”

Pushing a broom that had begun hovering too close to her vicinity out of the way, Hermione nestled up against a bare space of wall and crossed her arms, taking some of the weight off of her feet, which were starting to burn from being stood so long. Desk jobs sucked, she told herself. Should have been an Auror.

“You just referred to Harry as ‘Potter’ there, did you not catch yourself?” said Hermione once she had settled. “Sounding a bit like a pot?”

Draco gave her a confused look. “I don’t understand what kitchen appliances have to do with this, but I use the name in affection.”

Hermione raised her eyebrow, and Draco backtracked, just a smidgen, “Alright, incorrect use of the word. But calling him ‘Harry’ when I’d been so happy to call him ‘Potter’ all of these years just seems a waste to his name. He’s always been plain Potter to me! It’s wrong to throw all of that away, now that I can apply somewhat happier instances to the name. I call Ron by his given name,” he pointed out.

“Because calling him ‘Weasel’ was out of the question if you wanted to start anew.”

Draco shrugged. “I still call him Ron. And Ginny, Ginny. And Loony—er, Luna, Luna.”

“Merlin’s sake.” Hermione rolled her eyes. “Do you call me by my first name?”

“I do, actually.”

“You do not.”

“I do!” Draco protested, his eyes suddenly round and wide. Either he was getting spectacular at acting, Hermione thought, or he genuinely was being honest. “Ask around, I do. I only refer to you as ‘Granger’ in the utmost of necessary circumstances. Which, by the way, is very rare. Your name is automatically attributed to your person, last name not included.”

“Yeah,” sighed Hermione. “Publicity does that to you.”

“Being a war hero does that to you.”

Hermione’s lips quirked. “Are you referring to the publicity or the fact people think of me when they hear the name Hermione?”

“Both.” Wriggling his wrist, Draco shuffled the cuff of his coat down and removed his glove, then the other, and stuffed the both of them in a pocket. When he caught Hermione watching him, he raised both his eyebrows in an almost nostalgic challenge. “It’s a little warm in here.”

“I don’t believe I’ve said anything.”

“Yes, but you wanted to.”

“And how do you suppose that?”

“Because you’re Hermione _bloody_ Granger,” he declared, the touch of begrudge not hidden in the slightest. “You always want to say something.”

“I resent that statement, Malfoy,” she said, but smiled all the same.

“There you go again, calling me Malfoy,” he accused almost immediately, causing Hermione’s smile to slip. “Really, is it so hard to change over? At least when we’re not around others?”

“Tell me, M—Draco,” Hermione started, then paused momentarily when Draco visibly perked up at the sudden readiness. Sometimes, the change in his demeanor from the years she had known him previously was startling, and, if she hadn’t known better, she’d have wondered if he were jinxed in some way. But, as she’d discussed with Harry and Ginny (and Ron, if he was willing), the change seemed to come on, if in small increments, the moment he had taken over a flat of his own in London, owned by but away from his parents, as they so readily complained about whenever they stopped by her section of the Ministry and were within earshot of anyone willing to listen. The girl he’d also started seeing the year previously, Astoria Greengrass, may have sped up that process, though Hermione had not met her personally herself, despite having gone to the same school. It, to the three of them—sometimes four—seemed logical.

“Tell me,” she tried again after a beat, “when are we not around others?”

“Well, _now_ ,” said Draco, then offered a sheepish smirk when Hermione made a gesture to mean “obviously”, “and … well, not otherwise, I suppose you’re right in that.”

“So, really, I don’t see a point in agreeing to change from what we’ve always done.”

Draco’s expression hardened, but not in an unkind way. “I would prefer it,” he said simply. “As I am not the senior Malfoy in my family, it would also make more sense.”

Hermione’s eyebrows rose. “Are you suggesting I form relations with your family?”

“ _No_ ,” said Draco, now visibly frustrated. It didn’t quite bring her the glee it might have in her younger years. “I just—would like it. If you were to stop calling me by my surname. If only while we are alone.”

Hermione opened her mouth to reiterate her previous argument on the matter, but was stopped when Draco held up his hand and continued speaking, “ _Yes_ , I realize we are very rarely alone in each other’s company, if ever, but I am offering the suggestion that we might change that, too.”

This, Hermione’s brain supplied where it failed elsewhere, was not what she had planned for when she had gotten ready for work this morning.

They stood in silence for a moment, staring at one another, before Hermione gained back enough decency to supply the conversation with a small, plain, “Oh.”

Draco waited, but Hermione supplied nothing more. “I suppose that was a rejection to the proposal?”

“No,” said Hermione, slowly. “I just don’t know what it is we would do together, we’ve always been fairly strong opposites.”

“Ah, but we’ve also been the smartest of our respective groups, have we not?”

Hermione huffed, but she didn’t refute the statement, because it was probably—definitely—true. “Are you saying we’ll find common ground if we go about it by that route?”

“I am,” said Draco. “And I would like it if we tried, at least once.”

“Yes,” Hermione agreed, just as a broom was pushing its way into the small room, trailed on by a hand, and then a man. Seeing Draco first, he exclaimed in surprise, then in question, though Draco’s eyes were still on Hermione. “I suppose I would like that, too.”


End file.
